Is open science tone deaf?

The past week saw the latest installment of what Chris Chambers called the “arse-clenchingly awful ‘tone debate‘ in psychology”. If you have no idea what he might be referring to, consider yourself lucky, leave this blog immediately, and move on with your life with the happy thought that sometimes ignorance is indeed bliss. If you think to know what it is referring to, you may or may not be right because there seem to have been lots of different things going on and “tone” seems to mean very different things to different people. It apparently involves questions such as this:

What language is acceptable when engaging in critical post-publication peer review?

Is it ever okay to call reanalysis and replication attempts “terrorism”?

While on this topic, what should we do when somebody’s brain fart produces a terrible and tenuous analogy about something?

Should you tag someone in a twitter discussion on a conference when they didn’t attend it?

How should a new and unconventional conference be covered on social media?

What is sarcasm and satire and are they ever okay?

Also, if I don’t find your (bad?) joke or meme funny, does this mean you’re “excluding” me from the discussion?

When should somebody be called a troll?

Is open science tone deaf?

If you were hoping to find a concrete answer to any of these questions, I am sorry to disappoint you. We could write several volumes on each of these issues. But here I only want to address the final question, which is also the title of this post. In clear adherence to Betteridge’s Law the answer is No.

What has bothered me about this “tone debate” for quite some time, but which I only now managed to finally put my finger on, is that tone and science are completely orthogonal and independent of one another. I apologise to Chris as I’m probably rehashing this point from his arse-unclenching post. The point is also illustrated in this satirical post, which you may or may not find funny/clever/appropriate/gluten-free.

In fact, what also bothers me is this focus on open science as, to use Chris’ turn of phrase, an “evangelical movement”. If open science is an evangelical movement, is Brian Nosek its Pope? And does this make Daniël Lakens and Chris Chambers rabid crusaders, EJ Wagenmakers a p-value-bashing Lutheran, and Susan Fiske the Antichrist? I guess there is no doubt that Elsevier is the cult of Cthulhu.

Seriously, what the £$%@ is “open” science anyway? I have come to the conclusion that all this talk about open science is actually detrimental to the cause this “movement” seeks to advance. I hereby vow not to use the term “open science” ever again except to ridicule the concept. I think the use of this term undermines its goals and ironically produces all this garbage about exclusivity and tone that actually prevents more openness in science.

I have no illusions that I can effect a change in people’s use of the term. It is far too wide-spread and ingrained at this point. Perhaps you could change it if you could get Donald Trump to repeatedly tweet about it abusively and thus tarnish the term for good – just as he did with the Fake News moniker (I think “Sad” might be another victim). But at least I can stop using this exclusive and discriminatory term in my own life and thus help bring about a small but significant (p=0.0049) change in the way we do research.

There is no such thing as “open science”. There is good science and there is bad science (and lots of it). There are ways to conduct research that are open and transparent. I believe greater openness makes science better. As things stand right now, the larger part of the scientific community, at least in biological, social, and behavioural sciences, remains in the status quo and has not (yet) widely embraced many open practices. Slowly but surely, the field is however moving in the direction of more openness. And we have already made great strides, certainly within the decade or so that I have been a practicing scientist. Having recently had the displeasure of experiencing firsthand in my own life how the news media operate, I can tell you that we have made leaps in terms of transparency and accountability. In my view, the news media and politics would be well served to adopt more scientific practice by having easier access to source data, fighting plagiarism, and minimising unsubstantiated interpretation of data.

None of this makes “open science” special – it is really just science. Treating proponents of open practices as some sort of homogeneous army (“The Methodological Liberation Front”?) is doing all scientists a disservice. Yes, there are vocal proponents (who often vehemently disagree on smaller points, such as the best use of p-values) but in the end all scientists should have an interest in improving scientific practice. This artificial division into open science and the status quo (“closed science”?) is not helpful in convincing sceptics to adopt open practices. It is bad enough when some sceptics use their professional position to paint a large number of people with the same brush (e.g. “replicators”, “terrorists”, “parasites”, etc). The last thing people whose goal is to improve science should do is to encapsulate and separate themselves from the larger scientific community by calling themselves things like “open science”.

So what does any of this have to do with “tone”? Nothing whatsoever – that’s my point. Are there people whose language could be more refined when criticising published scientific studies? Yes, no doubt there are. One of my first experiences with data sharing was when somebody sent me a rude one-line email asking for our data and spiced it up with a link to the journal’s data sharing policy which added a level of threat to their lack of tact. It was annoying and certainly didn’t endear them to me but I shared the data anyway, neither because of the tone of the email nor the journal’s policy but because it is the right thing to do. We can avoid that entire problem in the future by regularly publishing data (as far as ethically and practically feasible) with the publication or (even better) when submitting the manuscript for review.

Wouldn’t it be better if everyone were just kind and polite to one another and left their emotions out of it? Yes, no doubt it would be but we aren’t machines. You can’t remove the emotion from the human beings who do the science. All of human communication is plagued by emotions, misunderstandings, and failures of diplomacy. I have a friend and colleague who regularly asks questions at conference talks that come across as rather hostile and accusatory. Knowing the man asking the question I’m confident this is due to adrenaline rather than spite. This does not mean you can’t call out people for offending you – but at least initially they also deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt (see Hanlon’s Razor and, for that matter, the Presumption of Innocence).

Bad “tone” is also not exactly a new thing. If memory serves, a few years before many of us were even involved in science social media, a journal deemed it acceptable to publish a paper by one of my colleagues calling his esteemed colleagues’ arguments “gobbledygook“. Go back a few decades or centuries and you’ll find scientists arguing in the most colourful words and making all manner of snide remarks about one another. And of course, the same is true outside the world of science. Questions about the appropriate tone are as old as our species.

By all means, complain about the tone people use if you feel it is inappropriate but be warned that this frequently backfires. The same emotions that lead you to take offense to somebody’s tone (which may or may not be justified) may also cause them to take offense to you using bad “tone” as a defense. In many situations it often seems wiser to simply ignore that individual by filtering them out. If they somehow continue to break into your bubble and pester you, you may have a case of abuse and harassment and that’s a whole different beast, one that deserves to be slain. But honestly, it’s a free world so nobody can or should stop you from complaining about it. Sometimes a complaint is fully justified.

It is also true that we people on social media or post-publication peer review platforms can probably take a good hard look in the mirror and consider our behaviour. I have several colleagues who told me they avoid science twitter “because of all the assholes”. Nobody can force anyone to stop being an asshole but it is true that you may get further with other people when you don’t act like a dick around them. I also think that post-publication review and science in general could be a bit more forgiving. Mistakes and lack of knowledge are human and common and we can do a lot better at appreciating this. Someone once described the posts on RetractionWatch as “gleeful” and I think there is some truth to that. If we want to improve science we need to make it easier and socially acceptable to admit when you’re wrong. There have been some laudable efforts in that direction but we’re far from where we should be.

Last but not least, you don’t have to like snarky remarks. Nobody can force you to find Dr Primestein funny or to be thrilled when he generalises all research in a particular field or even alludes that it’s fraudulent. But again, satire and snark are as old as humanity. It should be taken with a grain of salt. I don’t find every joke funny. For instance, I find it incredibly tedious when people link every mention of Germans back to the Nazis. It’s a tired old trope but to be honest I don’t even find it particularly offensive – I certainly don’t feel the need to complain about it every bloody time. But the question of hilarity aside, satire can reveal some underlying truths and in my view there is something in Primestein’s message that people should take to heart. However, if he pisses you off and you’d rather leave him, that’s your unalienable right.

Whatever you do, just for the love of god don’t pretend that this has anything to do with “open science”! Primestein isn’t the open science spokesperson. Neither is a racist who uses open data reflecting bad on the “movement”. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Freedom of speech isn’t wrong because it enables some people to say unacceptable things. Neither is open data bad because somebody might abuse it for their nasty agenda. And the truth is, they could have easily done the same with closed science. If somebody does bad science, you should criticise them and prove them wrong, even more so when they do it with some bad ulterior motive. If somebody is abusive or exploitative or behaving unethically, call them out, report them, sue them, get them arrested, depending on the severity of the case. Open science doesn’t have a problem with inclusivity because open science doesn’t exist. However, science definitely does have a problem with inclusivity and I think we should all work hard to improve that. Making science more open, both in terms of access to results and methods as well as who can join its community, is making science better. But treating “open science” as some exclusive club inside science you are inadvertently creating barriers that did not need to exist in the first place.

And honestly, why and how should the “tone” of some people turn you off from using open practices? Is data sharing only a good cause when people are nice? Does a pre-registration become useless when someone snarkily dismisses your field? Is post-publication review worthless simply because some people are assholes? I don’t think so. If anything, more people adopting such practices would further normalise them and thus help equilibrate the entire field. Openness is not the problem but the solution.

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5 thoughts on “Is open science tone deaf?”

“The last thing people whose goal is to improve science should do is to encapsulate and separate themselves from the larger scientific community by calling themselves things like “open science”.”

“But treating “open science” as some exclusive club inside science you are inadvertently creating barriers that did not need to exist in the first place.”

I find this reasoning strange and rather typical of social science gone mad. To me, you are basically saying let’s just stop using words to describe and define things as they merely cause barriers, and divide things into the-thing and not-the-thing.

It reminds me of something i once heard: “some people are so open-minded that their brain has fallen out”.

No this is not at all what I’m saying. It’s not about words but about what we do. As long as open practices are restricted to some small, vocal community of people it will not have much of an effect. Even worse would be if this is a small club (or “movement”) with set rules, formalised codes, and missions. I have no interest in joining a political party which is precisely what that would be.

All I am interested in is to improve science. That is a constantly evolving process. It will still be happening when all science is “open”. Sure now there is a bit of a movement going on (never denied that). Call it whatever the hell you like but don’t ask me to sign any membership charter 😛

No satire and sarcasm are acceptable just as embellishment and exaggeration are not acceptable. The only acceptable scientific practice is experimental. The only language that has not been butchered by academia is math. The only comparative measure is analogy. The only valid input is a feeling. Do not change the names or places as parody is humorous and it is legal and it serves well for maintaining accountability.